


Only When We're Done

by EllieMorgan



Series: Only When We're Done [1]
Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 13:13:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10697739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMorgan/pseuds/EllieMorgan
Summary: (Post-game.) Kandros didn't plan to get himself injured. He blames the desk job for getting him stuck in a remnant ruin on Havarl. At least he has pleasant company.





	Only When We're Done

The colonists probably had a much better view of things, but Kandros didn't start feeling at home until after Meridian. APEX was still just as active. The kett hadn't stopped dead, and based on the human Pathfinder's information, Kandros suspected they didn't have anywhere else to go if they failed their assignment in this cluster. Sure, having a turian Pathfinder helped, but putting the Archon down like a wild varren was an opportunity to breathe.

Shooting things up during the final push had been a bit of a relief, actually. Doing it shoulder-to-shoulder with Sloane Kelly? Bizarre as hell, and while she found the opportunity to give him a backhanded compliment on still being able to shoot straight, he wasn't looking forward to a repeat performance if one came. But holding a gun, letting training take over in the field… it was like stretching a muscle that had been cramped up for weeks. It was six hundred years better than being a political stooge. He'd consider going back to escort work, but any change in the Nexus balance of power – and spirits, it was absolutely a balancing act – could be disastrous. Kandros wasn't about to risk Nexus stability for a little self-interest.

Ryder was around the Nexus more often after a few weeks. Said she'd run out of things to explore that weren't at the bottom of a glass, and Kandros wouldn't fault her for the excuse. There was always plenty to explore, but the number of people out of cryo now had probably sidelined her a little. Rumor had it that the scientists wouldn't let her get her hands dirty on Meridian yet. Would have pissed him off in her position.

To top it off, if Tann and Addison were as comfortable as Kandros felt, it was possible they were becoming more interested in the Pathfinder 'figurehead' than the Pathfinder reality, at least in Ryder's case – particularly with several budding colonies and the grounding of the human ark. No one had mentioned what the future of the Pathfinder position was after meeting the primary objective, but from what he knew of Alec Ryder, Kandros doubted politics would have been an acceptable endpoint. He didn't think this Ryder would be satisfied with it either.

The days she was on the Nexus, Ryder jogged laps around Ops at 04:00. Kandros knew that because he'd come in early one morning after falling behind on reports, and then he made a habit of it. That angara on her team, Jaal or whatever his name was – he watched exactly twice before his curiosity was seemingly sated. After that, it was just Kandros, Ryder, two security officers, and a few engineers until 05:00, when Tann crawled out of his hole to terrorize the masses.

Then Ryder would stop and talk. Usually APEX chatter, except when he made a point to congratulate her for sticking it to the Archon. He let slip that APEX was planning something in tribute, but with all the activity it might take weeks to coordinate. He hoped she wouldn't hold that against his people – well, no. Of course she wouldn't. She wasn't the type.

Kandros couldn't dismiss that he was curious about the full ability of a Pathfinder, particularly one as forceful as Ryder. He'd seen her holding a sniper rifle for a solid few seconds on Meridian, but there was too much chaos at the time to tell how well she used it. Based on her handling of the angara and the krogan outpost, she had some solid diplomatic skills – but where a fight was concerned, it was difficult to differentiate between Ryder and her team members from only second or thirdhand reports. Frankly, Kandros didn't know whether to invite her on a mission, invite her to a range, or just leave damn well alone.

Six weeks after Meridian, the kett scraps made a concerted push in numbers APEX began to struggle with. Tann was bitching about the Resistance requesting help on Havarl. There were several pointless meetings on the subject, but the result was inevitable – resources had to be allocated because staying in the angara's good graces was crucial. Better the Initiative than exiles, anyway. But the Initiative didn't have an army; they had a militia. A damn small one. Kandros found himself assigning additional operators, people who couldn't fight but could work a comm, and, for the first time since Meridian, he grabbed a gun.

The Tempest was docked while his team boarded, and Ryder found him entirely by coincidence on the way out. He hadn't seen her except mornings – he supposed that might have been a better bet if he found any time to drink or otherwise wander the station – so this insight into her schedule came as a surprise.

"Ryder," he greeted in passing.

"You never leave Ops," she countered immediately.

He had to stop to chuckle at the assertion, but it was mostly true. Ops, bed, Ops again in the morning. Hell, he took meals in Ops. "Sorry. Kett to shoot. We need every man right now."

The human Pathfinder's face lit up like it was a holiday, but she played it off well with her arms crossed and hips tilted. "Is there space for one more?"

Kandros shrugged humanly. "I think they'd try to fire me if I got you killed. But if you're bored, your team could do a lot of damage."

Her eyes flicked to the Tempest out on the landing pad. She shifted her weight to the other foot. "They're busy," she said.

Not an answer he'd expected. "What, all of them?"

"Mostly. Cora's on Eos. Liam is with Scott, putting him through his paces –"

"Scott?"

"My brother."

Kandros had forgotten somehow, or he hadn't heard the name. "Right."

Ryder flashed a soft smile, the barest upturn of lips, as though she appreciated his curiosity. She continued, "Jaal went home for a while. Drack said he had somewhere to be, but... Vetra's probably free, and she's a good shot."

He couldn't help but flinch a little at the name. Vetra Nyx wasn't a bad person, but she barely fit 'turian' and tipped a little too far in the outlaw direction for comfort. Worse, her sister haunted Ops in the way only a half-baked teenager could.

On the other hand, this was something of an opportunity on the Pathfinder front.

So he said, "I've got two seats if you've got guns," and Ryder grinned.

That, in short, was how Tiran Kandros ended up on a ship with the human Pathfinder, Vetra Nyx, one salarian, two turian males, an asari, and one human male. He'd swear Vetra was glaring a hole in his skull. He ignored it in favor of triple checking his weapons, then for a ration bar, and then he spent a solid five minutes glaring right back. Ryder either had the right idea or was extraordinarily mistaken, because she elbowed her companion in the torso with her cheeks puffed – Kandros could barely begin to understand the mechanics of that little human trick. He relaxed his mandibles and his jaw when Vetra finally turned her attention to the location display.

Ryder only carried one weapon, that sniper rifle. Looked custom when he'd caught a glance at it earlier, but with it pressed between her back and the wall, he couldn't confirm. His gaze traced her shoulder from the rifle to her neck, to the curve of her jaw. Humans were strange that way, all simple lines like asari and stretchy as hell. He managed to finish that thought to himself and redirect his attention well before Ryder ever noticed the stare. Sarkin noticed though, the turian to his right, letting slip by straight-up laughing. Kandros reminded him quietly that he had access to the room assignments in residential.

Hell, there wasn't any harm looking at people anyway.

He slept right up to the drop zones. He'd planned the teams in transit, and (to his enduring disappointment) it made the most sense to keep himself and the Pathfinder separate. He wasn't exactly a powerhouse, but he was a leader, and Ryder operated with her team in the same capacity. Himself, Sarkin, Helene, and Tanaka on this side – Ryder, Nyx, Gavetis, Ura on the other. If Nyx acted the way he'd heard and Ryder acted the way she looked, then Gavetis would work well with Nyx, and Ura's tech would keep kett off whatever place Ryder planted herself. On his end, Tanaka was a half-decent sniper, and Helene's biotics would offer some crowd control.

The two teams dropped several kilometers apart to immediately block two Kett units from flanking Resistance forces. Everything worked well – until it didn't.

When Kandros came to, he couldn't remember anything after the first few shots. He made to check his shield and armor reflexively, but he couldn't move his right arm or leg – and then, through delirium, he realized he was pinned by Sarkin's body. He revised the assessment to 'corpse' after getting a close-up look at the hole in his friend's face, but he barely had the strength to shove him off. The body rolled more than he expected. There was a firefight in the distance – Ryder's team? Or the rest of his? And a tentative shift of weight in an attempt to stand hurt like hell.

Bits of memory faded into place. Not just two Kett units – fiends and a bunch of those converted krogan, with more grenades than good sense would ordinarily dictate they carry. Kandros swore and checked his omni-tool – busted, of course. Just his luck. This was a damned embarrassing failure if he'd ever seen one.

Someone had broken formation, he remembered. He couldn't remember – spirits, he felt like his brain had decided to commit suicide by frag grenade. He pressed his fingers to various parts of his head in an attempt to alleviate the pain, but he couldn't tell that it helped.

A roar came, sounding wet and far too close for comfort, and Kandros forced his body to cooperate long enough to find cover. He pressed the medigel release in his hardsuit with more force than was strictly necessary before peering over the remnant scrap. A fiend was still sniffing around, and he caught sight of it in time to see it slam a fist down onto some wild creature – one of those varren-like things with spines – and the fiend stuffed the half-flattened remains into its mouth. It wasn't dead when it went in; that would have been too kind. Instead, it fought through its own evisceration, screaming with its spine broken and guts hanging before the mouth closed for good.

Kandros swapped to a sniper rifle for the distance and silently thanked the spirits for armor-piercing rounds. It would take several shots, but he could handle one fiend even if his leg hurt far more than it should have. He peered through the sight and tracked its movements until it paused.

Four shots rang out in quick succession, and Kandros swore. He hadn't pulled the trigger yet. The fiend, with several very impressive divots in its head, turned away from him in search of the source somewhere to his left – he fired as well, only three before having to reload. It wasn't optimal targeting, slicing through the tough skin of its back instead of its face as he'd wanted, but three turned out to be just enough. He must have hit a lung, too – the fiend gasped sickeningly before collapsing face-first into the brush, and Kandros slid down his chosen cover to wait.

He'd expected Tanaka, but the person who came to retrieve him was Ryder. She was dirt-covered below the knees but otherwise seemed healthy. He said, "Things went seriously south if you're out here shooting things on my behalf," and found that his voice didn't come out as strongly as he'd meant it to.

"You didn't answer comms." She offered him a hand, but he waved it off.

"Omni-tool is busted. I don't think I can stand, either."

Ryder paused, looking for all the world as though she were listening intently to something – SAM, his mind supplied. She had an implant. "I'm not leaving him here," she said abruptly. She almost sounded offended, and Kandros suppressed the urge to laugh.

He dragged his leg back into place to peer over cover. There was some movement in the trees – not close enough for him to eliminate the possibility of wildlife, but close enough that he was immediately on edge. "Ryder, down."

To her credit, she obeyed immediately and crouched beside him.

"Where are the others?" Kandros kept his voice low, but the question had to be asked.

"Regrouped. Vetra stayed with them. The other turian is missing."

Ryder was peering over cover at the same movement he'd seen, but he remembered where he'd kicked off Sarkin's corpse. He nudged her and pointed into the brush. "Dead," he qualified, and she nodded.

A stray kett emerged into the clearing opposite their hiding place, then two more. Kandros made to line up a shot, but Ryder was faster – years of practice, clearly, and a damned good rifle didn't hurt. The resulting headshots were clean, but they took their toll. Ryder hid a cough. She couldn't hide the fresh blood on her gauntlet after pulling her hand away.

"Bio-converter?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"You're overusing it." Kandros regretted saying so when he glanced at her back – it was bare, and he clicked his mandibles against his jaw when he remembered she only carried one weapon. "I'm guessing your usual engagements don't last this long."

Ryder laughed at him and relaxed against cover. "Why did you come down here?"

"It seemed like the best way to get away from Tann."

"You could use Vortex for that. I don't think Tann knows what a drink is."

It wasn't a bad suggestion, but he knew he'd end up drinking alone even if he could find the time. One of his more recent Helius lessions: when you drink with APEX, you have regrets in the morning. Kandros wasn't about to say any of that, of course. Instead, he braced himself on the barrier and lifted up on his good leg – he experimented with the other one, but the pain shot up to his hip in a way that made him groan. Before he could reject it, Ryder tucked herself beneath his right arm and lifted his weight.

"Extraction is too far," he pointed out.

"Remnant ruins are just up the ledge. I saw a door. With the Archon dead, I don't think they'll care."

Kandros flinched when she encouraged him to move, but he went with it. "I'm starting to understand why your team looks at you like you're the second coming of Christ."

Ryder's pace faltered and his foot smacked the ground painfully; he managed to keep his mouth shut for that, but she'd clearly caught the look on his face. She was frowning when he turned his head to check. "Shit," she muttered. "Sorry. That's not a phrase I ever expected to hear from a turian."

"You hear a lot of phrases if you work with humans long enough."

"The asari broke formation," she said suddenly, looking straight ahead again to pinpoint the door for a beeline. It wasn't far – which was fortunate, because Kandros wasn't entirely sure how much more of this he could take.

"On your end?" Kandros asked, meaning to clarify.

Ryder shook her head. "When they found us, she asked me to find you. She told us she'd gone too far out, that you told her to stay close. She didn't listen."

"I don't remember."

He got another examination of his face for that one. "SAM, if I scan Kandros, can you check for a concussion?"

Kandros scoffed, "You have more important things to worry about."

But Ryder only shrugged. "You're the one who said I overdid it with the bio-converter."

It was true. Absolutely not the point, but completely true. "So," he began as she opened the remnant door, "has SAM told you yet that passing out and memory loss are plenty to diagnose a concussion?"

She dropped him heavily beside the door as it slid closed behind them. "You're not usually an asshole."

"I…" Kandros sighed. "Look, I'm sorry. This whole op went to hell. It's embarrassing. I shouldn't take that out on you. Especially you."

"We can't afford to lose you." Ryder was adjusting his leg to lay flat. He winced. She sounded honest and carried on, "You're a rock for a lot of people on the Nexus, not just APEX. You delegated your work for now, right?"

Kandros let his mandibles flutter in an affirmative, nodding as an afterthought since she seemed to want an answer.

"Tann probably wishes he had you back instead."

His laugh was involuntary. "He'll never admit that."

Ryder smiled and stood, brushing herself off. She paused at the door for a moment, then frowned and glanced around before storming resolutely to a console halfway down the hallway. She did – well, something – it activated smoothly and sank into the floor. The door itself emitted a loud, mechanical bang. A lock, maybe? But Ryder was swearing all of a sudden and then she was gone, out through a different door at the other end of the hall.

Kandros flipped the clips pinning armor to his right leg and began to peel the pieces off with the greatest of care. He wasn't in a hurry to show off his undersuit to Ryder or anything, but he couldn't just sit and do nothing – he'd evaluate the damage, make sure he wasn't bleeding to death, that sort of thing.

She returned while he was still poking around at it, pale as a ghost. "The door's locked."

"I thought that was what you meant to do."

"Yes," Ryder conceded. "But once the console sinks into the floor…"

Kandros stopped. Below the knee, broken as far as he could tell. The plate was split as well, and that was non-trivial. "Once it sinks?" he prompted.

"Ah," she breathed. "We can't get out."

He looked up at her and examined her features just in case her sense of humor was really that bad, but what he saw was thin lips and a furrowed brow. She wasn't joking. "Damn."

"There might be another console outside."

"Does your omni-tool still work?"

"I messaged Vetra."

Kandros breathed a sigh of relief. "That should be enough." The tactician in him kicked in. "What kind of supplies do you have?"

"Heat packs, basic medical. I don't have any food."

A quick tap at his chest confirmed his own memory. "I have a few ration bars, but that doesn't help you."

"I'll live," she insisted before reaching for the clasps of her own armor. Ryder's gauntlets came off first, the bare skin of her hands highlighted oddly in the light from the ruins. When she stripped the chestplate, a half-moment of something lewd crossed Kandros' mind – probably reminded him of some dancer somewhere, but he forced it down before he could place it properly. It was enough for Ryder to reach the bulk of her medical supplies, and she began to empty her pockets with some enthusiasm. The gauze was the most attractive item. It wouldn't be very secure, but he had a chance to at least brace his leg until he could receive proper medical attention.

"Hand me that," he said, pointing, "and find something I can use as a splint."

She tossed it his way before standing, affording the room a brief perusal before moving back beyond the interior door to – well, wherever it went. When she returned, it had to have been at least the better part of an hour, but she carried two smooth slabs of metal that were almost too large to work with.

"Big place?" Kandros asked.

Ryder offered a muted 'yeah' before collapsing back at his feet. He reached for the splints-to-be, but leaning forward – in addition to hurting – gave him a better look at her, and it tipped him off that his imagination probably exaggerated the size of the ruin and didn't give the remnant enough credit. She was beat to hell, blood on her brow and burned palms, and the cherry on top was the copper smear at the corner of her mouth. Kandros stripped his gauntlets to prep for work on his leg.

"How many?" was his next question.

She hesitated. His armor was an excuse, and she thumbed the clasp on his left side when his right hand proved too weak to follow through. "Lost count," she said eventually.

Kandros tsked, but it explained the amount of time she'd been gone. "If you go back in, swap rifles."

Ryder didn't argue.

"I need you to help splint my leg. Do you need to rest?"

"No. I'm fine. Tell me what to do."

Kandros dragged the first slab between his legs, mindful of the spur. He braced it against his healthy left knee and brought the right to rest against it for the moment. "Can your scanner tell how bad it is?"

There was a pause as she consulted her SAM, but Ryder answered in the affirmative after a moment and raised her omni-tool. "Looks like –"

"Will it work for me without the implant? Just hold it up."

Ryder was beginning to bristle a little. It was something he occasionally saw in human trainees not used to taking orders. Avitus told him recently in passing that it was probably his tone: a little too boot camp, or a little too turian. So while she complied – she pivoted around on the floor until she was pressed against his left side and raised her forearm between his face and his busted shin – she didn't seem to do so patiently.

"Sorry," he muttered for the second time today. "You get a little too used to ordering people around in paramilitary ops." The injury was a clean break, and the bottom half had shifted out of place. "Thanks, Ryder."

She relaxed, and he hoped that meant she wasn't pissed off at him. By all accounts, the human Pathfinder was a terrifying enemy to have – and he didn't have to joke about that. "Do we set it?" she asked.

"We splint it until we get a medic." He'd set his own bone once in his military life – that was a very bad day – but considering how rusty his combat skills seemed to be after his stint as a militia desk jockey, Kandros wasn't going to chance embarrassing himself twice. He brought his knees up and together, metal slab between them, and suppressed all but a tightening of his mandibles at the discomfort. "Have you done this for a turian before?"

"No. Do I have to do something different?"

"Grab from beneath," he instructed. "I have a surface fracture on the front. I need you to avoid that if you can, but tie it tight. Sound good?"

"Sure."

Her fingers were cool to the touch, but not uncomfortably so. Her tongue darted out and moistened her lips before she pursed them in concentration. That gash on her forehead was quickly becoming a bruise, and it served as a stark reminder of how thin human skin was. Ryder tore the gauze into four with the help of her teeth and dragged the other piece of metal up; Kandros spread his knees to give her space. He couldn't suppress the groan when she straightened and lifted it, but the process of tying the metal strips against either side of his leg barely reached 'extremely uncomfortable' by comparison.

"Shit, Kandros," passed her lips in a gasp after she'd released him. Ryder scanned again and didn't offer any negative comment on the result.

"No worse?" he asked.

"It's fine for now." Ryder closed her omni-tool with an exhale and rejoined him against the wall, the armor of her right thigh briefly tapping his left from carelessness. She tugged a pouch of water from somewhere in her shirt, took a swig, and offered it to Kandros; he accepted gladly, tilting his head back to throw it down his throat. Ryder watched carefully. "Do turians have much in the way of taste buds?"

Kandros looked at her sideways. "That's out of left field."

"Your mouth is open at the sides and dry, so you don't really sip things so much as you down them like shots. That can't be fun in zero-g."

"What does that have to do with taste buds?"

Ryder actually fumbled for words, with several false starts that would have made him wonder whether his translator had flipped out if his omni-tool weren't already a piece of scrap. Frankly, it was a miracle Ryder spoke a language natively that he understood. "Probably," she finally began, "…probably not a lot."

Kandros snickered. He couldn't help it. "It's all relative," he replied honestly. "We don't eat the same food, so it's hard to tell whether you taste things more strongly."

Her omni-tool pinged.

"Vetra?" Kandros asked.

"Yeah. They've just finished up. She's going to look for a console. If she finds one, she'd probably need Scott before she can get us out."

"Well," he said, "at least the company's not bad. You looked like you needed a vacation anyway."

Ryder laughed. "Speak for yourself. What do you do other than dispatch people?"

"It's exciting work, Pathfinder. I dispatch more people. And if they don't all get themselves killed, I pay for the first round. Then I get paid to defuse the bar fights."

She tilted her head to look at him, examining his features sideways with a curve to her lips, "You're running quite the racket, then."

"Yeah," he joked, "my own underground Kadara. I do it all for illicit double rations each week."

Their wait was mostly companionable silence. Ryder spent time pacing and fiddling with her scanner, or leaving the room – she took his rifle, as promised – and coming back. But she'd always returned to his left side, and she'd fallen asleep there now with her undersuit-covered shoulder hitting against his still-armored one. Kandros considered getting rid of that, but fact was that his carapace wasn't exactly comfortable either. Her head tilted to the side, mouth gently parted, and he watched her for a complete lack of anything else to do. No omni-tool, and he couldn't move. It was infuriating. Not her, of course, but inaction.

There was a beep, and her omni-tool flashed involuntarily into view. Ryder slept through that in a way only non-military were capable of – Kandros had that drilled out at fifteen, and he chuckled.

"Tiran Kandros," came an artificial voice after a pause of several seconds.

He rolled his head back until his fringe brushed the wall behind him. "SAM, I assume."

"Yes. Vetra Nyx has left the planet in order to retrieve human members of the Pathfinder crew. Angaran Resistance are posted outside the door. As of Vetra's departure, they had not located an alternate entrance."

"Thank you, SAM."

"Vetra has requested that I pass on a message: 'do not do anything stupid.'"

He clicked his mandibles against his face. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"She did not elaborate."

Kandros planned to ignore it, then. The amount of stupid one male turian could get up to with a broken leg was extremely limited.

Trained habit wouldn't let him sleep until Ryder woke, especially with the knowledge of remnant running around. Not that he could have done much against any big ones, but he still had an assault rifle and could wake Ryder if necessary. He couldn't judge the time very well after a while, and he wasn't about to pull her arm into his lap in an attempt to check her omni-tool, but it felt like around six hours before she stirred. He'd gotten hungry and dug into a ration bar not long prior, but her alertness was a strong cue to his mind that it was safe to doze.

He woke every time Ryder stood or rejoined him or left the room. It didn't bother him any, and he doubted she noticed. The intervals were long enough that he was well-rested after several successive chunks of time. Ryder was sitting cross-legged by his feet by then, hair still at odd angles from her own nap earlier. For all the wandering around she'd done, she remained bare of armor except on her legs, and the soft curve of her waist tapering toward her hips was amazing from this angle. Breasts didn't do a damn thing for him – why would they? – but soft curves, sure. Just alien enough to entice, and that was a large part of why asari were so damned popular.

"Spirits," Kandros swore under his breath. It caught her attention, but he paid no mind to that – this wasn't an asari at some seedy bar, it was Ryder. Talk about inappropriate.

She misinterpreted in reply. "Are you all right? Does it hurt?"

Kandros wasn't about to conjure up some lie, except by omission. "I'm fine. What time is it?"

"04:30 or so on the Nexus."

His estimates were right on the mark. It had been about fourteen hours since the door locked, and there hadn't been nearly enough time yet for Vetra to retrieve crew and return. Kandros hummed thoughtfully. Ryder's stomach growled, a rude interruption – fourteen hours since she'd eaten, too, and Kandros wished he could do something about that. She simply warded it off with another sip of water, and he declined the same. Ryder set it aside, tucked her knees up, and began to peel what remained of her armor away from her undersuit.

"Uncomfortable?" he asked.

"I don't think I've ever been in armor this long."

"Could still be remnant around."

Ryder laid her leg armor aside in a neat pile with the rest. She'd moved his leg and forearm parts into their own pile at some point while he slept. "It'll be a little longer before the assembly line puts out enough that we should worry."

"Huh," Kandros replied. He hadn't thought much about how the remnant populated themselves, but if anyone would know their shit, it would be Ryder.

It was half an hour (but felt like less) when he uttered the word 'spirits' again, and Ryder started to laugh.

"What's funny?"

"Sorry, I didn't mean…" She paused to catch her breath, but she kept the smile on her face. "It was just really familiar. I had an ex-boyfriend who would overuse it. All 'spirits' all the time."

"A turian ex-boyfriend," Kandros observed. "That's some insight into the human Pathfinder the documentary never bothered with." He shifted until his back left the wall, hissing at the soreness that accompanied his change in position, but the splint held and was doing its job. It was too damned heavy, though. "Looks like I'm going to need a favor your current paramour won't like." He assumed she had one. Hell, it might even be Vetra.

Ryder opened her mouth as though to say something, but she closed it in an apparent change of heart and restarted. "What kind of favor?"

"I need to dump some waste," was the politest way he could think of putting it. "It might be better to do that in the next room – or wherever. But I'm going to need a lot of help."

She didn't question it or plead awkwardness. She pulled him forward enough to reattach his rifle to his back – on the off chance they needed it, he supposed – then moved to tuck herself in at his left arm.

"Right side," he corrected. "That splint is like having a couple of boulders taped around my leg."

Ryder readjusted, supporting him below his right arm as he stood. It was painful, but nothing like it had been, and she was a very patient assistant down the corridor. She only let her grip on him loosen to get the door open, and they moved carefully into the next, identical corridor. "I don't have one," Ryder forced out while bearing his weight. "I'm not involved with anyone."

"So what's Vetra's problem? She stared me down like I was a risk to your health."

Ryder didn't answer. She turned him sideways to rest on some kind of block jutting from the floor, and she set to work on the clasps of his armor. Kandros bit down any jokes about usually needing dinner before a woman stripped him down. He could have done it himself, but he didn't reject the assistance. It was nice, in a way. Being tended to.

The undersuit was made for circumstances like this, so he waved Ryder off with his armor when he was free of the hardsuit. She took it back to the other room. He could support enough weight on his good leg to lift himself, and he prayed she wasn't too repulsed when he called her back after he'd finished. She smiled at him when she hoisted him up, pausing to ask if he was ready but not waiting for an answer. They shuffled back down the hallway in the other direction, and Kandros caught his breath when she dropped him back where he'd started.

"Thanks," he said.

"Drinks are on you when we're back."

Kandros chuckled and slouched back into a comfortable position. "I don't know that I could afford your crew on top of APEX. Hell, if Drack drinks with half the enthusiasm Kesh has…"

Ryder collapsed back at his left and elbowed him as though to retaliate for the comment. Without his armor on, he could actually feel that, and he laughed.

"Drack isn't here," she countered. "I think I can forgive you for not boozing him up."

"You and Vetra then," Kandros conceded.

Silence prevailed for a while. Ryder pursed her lips every so often as though considering some sort of world-ending thought, and Kandros only recognized too late that he must have been looking at her to notice. He turned away to favor the ceiling instead, and the faded glow of ancient tech was a thousand times less awkward.

"Are you interested in Vetra?"

Kandros would have loved to come up with some kind of witty reply to that, but instead he just barked out a laugh that hurt. It was rude as hell, of course, but he couldn't help that kind of involuntary reaction under these circumstances. When he caught his breath, he couldn't look at her. "I don't want to know who suggested that to you. No. I'm not."

After a few more beats of silence, he looked her way if only to ensure she was still breathing. She trailed her eyes across the opposite wall, lips slightly parted. She didn't look offended or anything. Kandros nudged her with his left knee, just something to get her to look at him, and that brief meeting of gazes was enough for him to know they were still all right. He turned back and learned every angle of the ceiling over the next several hours.

At the twenty hour mark, Ryder had made a total of eight laps around the ruin and had all but given up on an alternate exit from inside. At thirty hours, Kandros dug out his own water supply (as hers was exhausted) and encouraged her to drink as much as possible. He'd been briefed once or twice on human physical reactions to lack of food, and he remembered enough of it to know she must feel like shit. At this point, she was eyeing his rations in a way that told him she was considering the risk.

"If you die from anaphylaxis, I'll never forgive myself," he told her, and that was the end of it.

The light of her own omni-tool was clearly making the not-so-well-hidden headache worse for her, but Ryder dutifully checked it whenever a reassuring message from her team came through. They were considering excavation equipment. Hell, the krogan had successfully broken remnant doors on Elaaden.

She slept most of the time from thirty-five hours on, staggering to her feet for the occasional bathroom break. She still insisted on helping him, for however weak she was becoming, and one failed effort at shuffling down the hallway on his own forced him to accept it.

At forty-one hours, Ryder received a message: a demolition team was setting up outside. After relaying it, Ryder told Kandros about her family. Her brother, her difficulties with her father, her mother's cryo pod – everything, the lot of it. SAM chimed in audibly to try to stop her from expending too much energy, and Kandros took the public chatter as an unstated plea for him to force the issue. He took her gently by the shoulders and inhaled deeply – but she leaned forward before he had the chance to speak, and he at first worried that she'd lost consciousness.

Instead, she touched her forehead to his, and Kandros jolted back for a moment before remembering that no, she definitely knew that it was affectionate, somewhere far beyond what a Pathfinder should be doing to the Nexus head of security – 'turian ex-boyfriend' rang a couple of bells in the back of his head. She still had enough sense to be embarrassed, and Kandros wasn't nearly brave enough to re-initiate. Instead, he stuttered, trying and failing to find some kind of sentence that might fit this circumstance. 'Pathfinder' was foremost in his mind. 'Human' was second. 'Stuck here' was an afterthought.

Clearly he'd done entirely the wrong thing, exactly what SAM hadn't wanted, because she tugged herself free from his grip before he could figure out how to shake the daze. She walked to the next room, her fingers tracing the right wall for security.

"Shit," he muttered to himself in her absence. "Shit." He felt as though he'd run a mile. How did he miss seeing that coming? Was it stress? Or was it something she'd thought about before getting stuck here, and just the act brought on by delirium?

Sure, he'd looked. He'd admit that. But looking, on its own and divorced from any feeling or thought, was innocent. Keep it in your pants, Tiran. He bounced his head off the wall behind him – an extreme to take the edge off his anxiety.

The exterior door groaned, loud and echoing, and it startled the hell out of him when it began. They were close. He waited for Ryder to react, to come back at the noise, but after several minutes the sound was almost painful and it became clear she wasn't returning. Kandros swore again and struggled to his feet, putting most of his weight against the wall with his bruised right arm in an attempt to compensate for his leg. Some part of the door seemed to snap – or so it sounded, but a brief glance back showed no change visually.

When he reached three quarters of the way, the door to the next section slid open to reveal Ryder standing there, and Kandros let out a laugh at his own concern. Of course she was fine, just took a little longer.

"What are you doing?" preceded her forcing her way between his body and the wall to support him properly.

"Going for a walk," he joked. "It's a real racket in here."

"Kandros –" came from her mouth in a tone that sounded like the start of a warning, but he interrupted her.

"Tiran," he corrected. "If you want to make it awkward." And damn if he didn't want her to. Something else snapped in the door behind them, and he twisted his good leg to hint her to bring them about. She did, and they faced the exit together. A fresh breeze broke through, with a bright light and voices. "Ryder," Kandros started, but that was the last thing he could recall.

The next time he woke, he was in a med-bay. He glanced down at his leg first; it had been set or healed or both. A glance to his left told him where his armor was: piled on the next bed. A door was straight ahead, closed. Display of human physiology to the right. One asari doctor.

"You're awake," was the clinical observation.

Kandros breathed a sigh of relief and enjoyed reclining for a second before making the attempt to sit up. "Thanks for the assist."

The asari looked him over in a way he'd gotten used to after injuries like this – the way his leg was situated, the color of his face. Deciding whether to tell him to lay the hell back down. She didn't. "That's why I'm here," she replied instead.

"T'Perro?" Kandros fished the name out of his memory somewhere. He didn't recognize the structure of this room, so his best guess was the Tempest.

"I'm flattered you knew."

He shook off the polite response and pulled up to the edge of the bed, sitting properly. "I hope you got some food into the Pathfinder."

"She's doing well, and that's all I can say without breaching privilege."

Kandros hummed and tested weight on his right leg. No pain. "Discharge instructions?"

Dr. T'Perro smiled and tapped the top edge of her data pad with her fingers. "If all my patients were as obedient, my job would be considerably more relaxing." She grabbed a bottle, smoothly, from her desk. Kandros extended his hand to receive it; it was light, mostly empty. "Once every twenty hours to speed healing. No more firefights for two weeks."

"Yes ma'am."

"We're several hours out from the Nexus. Don't overdo it."

He agreed, then went for a walk. There wasn't much layout to learn; a pass too close to the cargo bay doors revealed Liam Kosta and Vetra – both of whom looked up, but Kandros wasn't feeling polite enough to go in and initiate small talk. He could hear the echos of an angaran voice and wondered briefly whether 'home' for Jaal had been Havarl – in which case the Pathfinder retrieving him was understandable. Kandros had no excuse to see whether Ryder was in her quarters. He might have made a fool of himself on the surface, and he wasn't desperate for round two.

After considering the idea of wandering around upstairs, he rejected it in favor of settling in at the table in the kitchen. His omni-tool had clearly been repaired or he wouldn't have understood the doctor, let alone hints of words from the angara somewhere above. A successful poke around the interface confirmed it. He pulled up his messages to check for anything urgent; it seemed all the fires were well-handled for the time being, which spoke volumes about his team on the Nexus. He had an apology from Helene for her mistake breaking formation and a thanks from Tanaka for cover fire he didn't recall providing.

"Tiran."

Oh, that wasn't fair. That word from her mouth now held weight, and he glanced up to meet Ryder's gaze as she rested one shoulder against the doorframe. "Good to see you up," he offered, dropping his forearm to the table. His omni-tool interpreted the 'close' request as it should have. Ryder didn't say anything else, so he cleared his throat and forced himself to become fascinated by the kitchen sink.

The door closed when she made the decision to wander in, and Kandros was grateful when she dug around in the fridge instead of making any move to join him.

When she found a cup of something brown and grabbed a spoon from the silverware drawer, she turned back toward him with her lips turned down more than he'd like. "I was out of line," she began.

Ah, he thought. That's where she was trying to take this. "How about we shelve that? At least until I buy you that drink." He didn't want to let her stew, so he silenced the unasked question on her lips with a clarification: "Just you."

Ryder peeled back the cover of her snack. "I'd like that," she said.


End file.
